


re-rebirth

by v3ilfire



Series: like no lion that you've heard before [4]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 12:48:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7463886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/v3ilfire/pseuds/v3ilfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>** CONFIDENTIAL ** AUCKLAND CITY HOSPITAL **</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. critical

**Author's Note:**

> happy ending in effect where the reapers get obliterated and the mass relays get damaged but y'all know the geth and EDI are still kickin'.

They were going to find her. 

Admiral Hackett had not explicitly disapproved of the idea, but Joker had already stolen the Normandy on more than one occasion prior and made it crystal clear that he was not afraid to do it again. Would have shattered his right hand trying to make a point of it too, had EDI not interfered. “Shepard will want you in one piece, Jeff,” she said, a hand on his wrist. “We must hurry.” Every single diagnostic EDI ran pointed to  _ rage _ while he stared at her, but much to her relief, he quickly resigned.     
“You’re right. I won’t be the reason she dies  _ twice. _ ”  
“Godspeed, Normandy,” came the crackle over the comm. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. Hackett, out.”  

Despite Doctor Chakwas’ protests, Garrus and Kaidan suited up, pumped themselves full of enough Medi-Gel to make a Hanar tap dance, and each took point on a search team. They split EDI and Glyph respectively between themselves to run thermal scans, and decided Vega could cover more ground on his own with Allers’ camera drone. Traynor would coordinate and compile data via comm, with Cortez on standby with the shuttle at the rendezvous point. James joked about putting Shepard out of a job, somehow.   
“Just don’t tell _her_ that,” Garrus quipped. “The last time Shepard was fired she nearly staged a coup of the largest terrorist organization in the galaxy and executed a successful suicide mission. I’m afraid to think what she’ll do when she has _free time_.” 

 

* * *

 

On the Citadel, the screams of Shepard’s name rose up from under the roar of the Kodiak, over the thump of boots hitting ground before it ever had a chance to land. The crew who had served on the SR-1 hoped she’d make another heroic leap from the debris like she did when Sovereign crash-landed into her face; the more recent additions hoped for even more dramatic miracles than that.

It was Glyph who spotted the victory ring in the rubble, dog tags still attached. Kaidan scrambled for the glimmer, yanked the chain free from a fractured pipe, and stood struck with the realization that it was the first time he’d ever seen the thing on its lonesome. The alliance standard clinked weakly against her ID: Shepard, Florence; 5923-AC-2628; A-Positive. “She can’t be far,” he called out to the rest of his team. “Glyph, scan ahead. The rest of you, split up.” 

An incorrect estimate, considering it was Garrus who patched in over the radio. “Everyone back to the rendezvous point, I found her! Well - most of her.”

 

* * *

 

Chakwas had banned them all from the med bay before anyone even had a chance to ask - even closed the shutters for emphasis. “No distractions,” she snapped. “Get me to a hospital and find Miranda. I need someone who can make sense of these damn Cerberus cybernetics.”

Easier said than done, of course, but both Traynor and EDI had long since proven that nothing was impossible with a little teamwork and ingenuity. Finding a hospital that wasn’t completely in ruins took almost the same mix of luck and circumstance as saving the Normandy with a toothbrush, but sooner rather than later there was a group of tired soldiers crammed into the waiting room of Auckland City Hospital in New Zealand. Not one to let all her other patients slide through the cracks, Chakwas made sure there was a physician standing by to receive them while she tended to the Commander. Garrus joked dryly about the good doctor now trying to distract  _ them _ , but no one laughed. It was probably true.

The only scrap of hope anyone had over the next three days was a dim red light glowing over the operating room Shepard had been wheeled into. There were two glass walls separating them and their Commander, leaving little to do but watch helplessly as doctors filtered in and out throughout the day, Chakwas often among them. James managed, at some point, to pull a nurse aside and ask for an update,  _ any _ update, but there were only two relevant words to dig from his platitudes:  _ critical, unstable.  _

Miranda arrived without fanfare somewhere between the first night and its consequent morning, but the first time anyone saw head or tail of her was leaving the OR, hair thrown sloppy atop her head and the sleeves on the oversized scrubs they’d given her rolled up to the elbows. She rounded a corner before anyone could even try to get her attention.

It was on the morning of the fourth day that Chakwas finally crossed the glass theshold into the waiting room, clutching a cup of coffee in one hand and a stack of forms in the other. “These are your discharge papers,” she began. “You are all free to go.”    
“I’m not going anywhere,” Kaidan shot back, his impatience made even sharper by yet another oncoming headache.    
“Perhaps on the Normandy that would fly, Major, but you’re in my domain now. If you need an order to vacate the premises, Admiral Hackett has tried to leave me his direct line four times now.”  
Tali shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “How can you even suggest that we leave, Doctor?”   
“You, especially, Admiral Zorah,” Chakwas scolded. “You have a homeworld to settle. All of you, in fact, have jobs more important than sitting and moping in New Zealand. The galaxy needs the Normandy, and her crew. Go. Give your Commander something good to wake up to.” 

 

* * *

 

The day that Florence finally stabilized, Kaidan got himself threatened with losing rank for a particularly aggressive vocal opposition of a combined memorial service for Shepard and Anderson in London. Anderson was London-born, after all, and that’s where the Alliance brought his body once it had been found.  _ That _ made sense. Resigning Florence to an early grave while she was still fighting for her life in New Zealand, he would not stand for. Timely as always, EDI cut the feed before he could do any real damage, but the whole exchange still left the Major with a creeping pounding in his temples and a tremble in his hands.  
“You know,” Joker chimed in over the loudspeaker. “I think we should make a formal tradition of hanging up on people who outrank us. Or a drinking game, since the Krogan aren’t around to break my ship. Her ship,” he corrected quickly.    
“Technically, as of last week, Kaidan is the acting Commander while Shepard is in recovery,” EDI added. “For the moment, it is  _ his _ ship.” Before Joker could issue a rebuttal, Traynor decided to chime in.    
“If we’re all clear on our place in the food chain: Major, you have a message at your private terminal.”  
“Money says it’s Hackett!”  
“Is now really the time for gambling, Jeff?”    
“You’re just mad because you know I called the  _ right _ bet.” Kaidan had to give Joker credit - he was determined to keep things as normal as possible. It worked remarkably for the most part, save for the most recent altercation with Alliance brass and the fact that there were no non-humans on board. 

Tali had been the first to leave, determined to have her waterfront home built in time for Shepard to come and visit her. Liara was the next, beckoned to try and piece her information network back together to locate estranged Asari, and while Garrus fought leaving the Normandy with the most enthusiasm, his father eventually convinced him to come back to what was left of Palaven and help smooth the new alliance with the Krogan. The real miracle and perhaps, the most surprising one, was that nobody complained about the new travel times. They couldn’t, really, not when they had homeworlds to come back to in the first place. Even the Quarians, who were the farthest away, were too busy showing off their savvy in jury-rigged space travel to gripe about the fact that their trip was painfully longer and more arduous. 

Joker and EDI had taken their playful bickering off the comm at Traynor’s request just before Kaidan reached the terminal. He’d fully expected to owe Joker a handful of credits after reading a disgruntled missive from Admiral Hackett, but the mass e-mail did not come from the Alliance.  

_ Subject: ** CONFIDENTIAL ** AUCKLAND CITY HOSPITAL **  _

_ Shepard is still considered critical, but stable. Her vitals look promising, but we must take some daunting risks in the coming weeks. The team here in Auckland is incredibly capable, and Miranda has become indispensable for her working knowledge of the Cerberus cybernetics.  _

_ Trust in us to give her the best chance she has at surviving. Trust her to take it.  _

_ PS: Joker, you better be taking your medications.  _

 

* * *

 

Chakwas ultimately grew to regret updating everyone on their commander’s condition. Every single day after sending the message, she opened her terminal to a fresh barrage of questions, most of them simply begging for any scrap of news. All except for Joker, who would never outright ask for an update  _ anyway _ , and mostly wrote to complain about everyone’s ‘shit moods.’

_ You’d think she died, or something, _ he’d tacked on. A joke stemming from EDI’s influence, if she were to guess. 

The doctor dared not respond to any of these messages, however. While it was true that Florence grew a little stronger every day, there were still big procedures on the horizon and she dared not get anyone’s hopes up while the worst-case scenario was still a very real possibility. Thankfully, the messages began to slow down until it was just Kaidan and Garrus sending one word every single day:

_ Anything?  _

The long version of the story, one that Chakwas and Miranda both agreed not to panic the crew with, was more daunting than anyone cared to think about. Florence Shepard had, to put it lightly, a more complicated medical history than Auckland was equipped to handle. During the initial examination, the resident team simply gave up on counting the breaks and fractures in her left arm and called it ‘crushed,’ and it took just one glance from the head physician to determine that her right leg was burned beyond saving below the knee. Amputation was risky with the amount of blood she’d lost, but altogether necessary: the wounds were too difficult to clean and too dangerous to let fester to the point of infection. As a result, arranging for transfusions, prosthetics, and options for cloning the damaged limbs  _ on top _ of the Commander’s meticulous treatment plan kept all six doctors awake for days straight. Making all the necessary preparations in such a tumultuous time was nearly impossible, but then again, that’s what they’d said about fighting the Reapers. 

 


	2. undeterred

As the fastest ship in the Alliance, the Normandy became a glorified taxi and delivery service for the endangered and disenfranchised (Joker spent a significant amount of time poking at the fact that they doubled as a fuel wreckage clean up). It was a calm job, a _good_ job with immediate effects on the communities they came to assist, but the change from dodging Reapers in the far reaches of the galaxy to straining the Normandy’s built-in FTL capabilities just to get out of Sol had the same effect as moving everything on the ship two inches to the left. Not to mention that, successful as their runs were, it wasn’t long before much of the personnel was delegated elsewhere, leaving only a skeleton crew.

Kaidan felt the changes the most. It was one thing to be on the Normandy without Florence, another entirely to be there without Liara, Garrus, and Tali, too. When he wasn’t busy pouring himself over new orders from the brass or coordinating pickups and dropoffs to colonies, he was at his terminal. He became so painfully predictable in his routines that Traynor would simply tell him, “Nothing yet,” before he could ever touch the thing. Not that it mattered - Chakwas’ next communication came in the form of an audio message sent directly to EDI with the instructions to broadcast it to the ship.

Only a click preceded Chakwas’s steady voice. “If you’re ready, let’s begin. What is your name?”  
“Florence Shepard,” was the response, and the universe simply _stopped_.  
“And what year is it?”  
“2183, Earth standard.”  
“Good. Now, Commander, I have three words for you: varren, justicar, and spaceport. Could you repeat those back to me?”  
“Varren, justicar, and spaceport.” 

The crew was silent while they listened to their Commander name mundane objects around the room, the gentle tapping of her fingers against a datapad as she was asked to compose simple sentences or draw simple pictures, spelling easy words backwards and forwards with the same ease she held a gun. Nearly seven minutes of basic memory and cognition tests, all passed with flying colors. Seven minutes, and the entire atmosphere of the ship changed.

Shepard was _alive_. 

“Doctor Chakwas would like me to add that Shepard sleeps most of the day and is not yet ready for visitors,” EDI finished. “I am also to inform the Major that he and Garrus have been flagged as spam.”  

The weeks after hearing Florence’s voice, weak and hoarse as it was, were significantly easier to bear than empty _waiting._ According to EDI, the crew was 23% more efficient in their tasks, and as news of the Commander’s miraculous survival spread (a leak from Auckland, evidently) everywhere the Normandy went it was greeted with cheers and congratulations and overwhelming gratitude. The end of a day on the ship was no longer spent in quiet dread of an uncertain future, but in its _anticipation_.

Even the newest message from Admiral Hackett was met with significantly less dread. Another mission was just another day closer to the return of Commander Shepard to her Normandy.

Especially considering that Hackett’s newest order was a diplomatic pickup for Anderson’s memorial from Auckland City Hospital.

 

* * *

 

Florence never realized the level of bureaucratic red tape she’d be faced with as an official patient at a real hospital, and not just a soldier limping into the med bay on her own ship. Chakwas was a constant in both situations, but even she admitted to facing pressure from the head physician to keep the Commander bedridden until they were sure, _really sure_ , that her heart wouldn’t just give out on her from the physical stress. _No point in getting anyone’s hopes up_ , was perhaps the most depressing sentiment she’d ever heard.

But there she was, months later, finally sitting up on her own. Miranda had brought her some clothes that reminded her, with painful irony, of her six months under house arrest.  
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in civilian clothes,” Miranda said, eyeing the Commander’s plain discomfort as she sat in loose pants and a shirt, hair braided and slung over her shoulder. “Or your hair down.”  
“Casino,” Florence reminded her.  
“You still had your bun.” Florence hummed. Miranda shifted her weight. “How are you adjusting?”  
“It’s going to take a while to set in. You’re _sure_ they’re only cloning parts of me this time?”  
“Yes, Shepard. I’m sure. You changed the subject.”  
Florence glanced down to the gleaming fingers of her prosthetic arm, rested over the pale and scarred flesh of her remaining hand. “You asked me how I was adjusting.” In truth, she didn’t _know_. She just remembered thinking she needed a new translator when Garrus just -- clicked? Chirped? -- and the next thing she knew her own voice was shredding her throat into nothing while Chakwas held her shoulders down, pressed her into a hospital bed all the while _screaming_ that they’d won, they’d _won_ , it was over, she could _calm down_.

And then someone pumped her full of sedative, and the rest was… blurry.

Miranda did not try to prod for much longer, already running late for a shuttle that would take her to rejoin her sister in one of the colonies that wasn’t entirely decimated. This left Florence in stillness again; restless but too injured and exhausted to do anything but wait. According to Chakwas, Hackett had called and asked her to be ready for a transport to London for Anderson’s memorial. A small frigate, more than likely, considering how often the Normandy was hailed in the news vids as a ‘saving grace’ for colonies and settlements that regular Alliance fighters could not reach as quickly.

The longing washed over her then, a burning want for the glimmers in a great void and the gentle shifts in the Normandy’s mass effect fields that made Florence’s biotics buzz. She’d forced herself to come to terms with everything before London: all the loss, tragedy, death, war’s brutal calculus. And now… winning the war wasn’t a matter of adjusting, it was closer to just… starting over. There was still so much to do, but without the threat of imminent destruction, she was left with room to want. It was a surprising feeling, one she’d never thought she could afford despite the fact that it snuck into her chest every once in a while. She wanted her ship, her crew, her _friends._

She wanted Kaidan, but her promise was merely to wait for him on the other side, whatever that may have been. It was up to him to show up.

Florence stood up at the sound of a knock on her door, all her weight balanced precariously between her good leg (though ‘good’ was a bit of an overstatement) and a pristine carbon-fiber cane she was meant to hobble around on until the cloned limbs were ready. The cane didn’t last long, clattering haplessly against the tile floor when its user was swept into a tight embrace.

Kaidan buried his face into Florence’s neck, daring to hold her only as tightly as she held him. She felt his breath shake under her palm, kissing weak-kneed gratitudes into her collarbone and along her jaw, and breathing them right back into her. Goodbye had been so hard for them, so _heavy_ , but goodbye paled in comparison to saying hello. One would think that after Horizon, they’d know that.

“ _Damn_ , Major. Maybe I should be taking tips from _you_.” Kaidan choked out a laugh, careful not to let Florence drop as he released her. She’d have been embarrassed about being caught in the middle of such a display if she wasn’t so _god damn_ overwhelmed by the sight of James, Joker, EDI, and Traynor huddled at the door.  
Joker fixed his cap over his eyes. “Just don’t hug me, Commander. You’ll break both of us.”

 

* * *

 

They trailed the setting sun all the way from Auckland to Europe. Florence never would have guessed how brightly Earth’s atmosphere gilded the sky if she wasn’t watching it bleed into crimson over the Normandy’s exterior hull. For once, bed rest didn’t seem such a punishment.

She’d changed into dress blues the moment she set foot in her cabin, all except for the coat which she left hanging on the back of a chair until they were to land, cane leaning precariously on the armrest. Kaidan had placed his on her desk (untouched since the last time she was in her cabin), and then laid himself next to her. He wanted nothing more than to hold onto her and never let go, _never_ again, but she seemed content enough to merely lay side-by-side and watch the sky pass over them. It was more than he ever thought to ask for anyway, so he did not press for more.

“So what now?” he asked eventually, barely a whisper. The one question on everyone’s mind. “We… didn’t exactly plan this far, Shepard.”  
Florence furrowed her brow. “Did we ever plan?”  
“No,” he laughed, “I guess we didn’t.” Without breaking her skyward stare, Florence started to reach for his hand. Kaidan met her in the middle, but found himself unable to resist leaving tender kisses over her knuckles while she thought on her answer.    
“We do what we always did.”  
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”  
“We have a clean slate now. So we keep going, we do better. We need to prioritize rebuilding the mass relays so that we can _help_ each other. Start interplanetary support with the colonies -- what’s so funny?”

Kaidan eased out of his laughter as soon as Florence turned to face him. “Nothing, nothing. Sorry, Shepard.” He wasn’t sorry, but she let him kiss her anyway, only to break from him once her stomach lurched to signal the Normandy’s descent. Whatever else inside her shifted with the ship, Kaidan noticed. “You gonna be alright, Flo?”  
God, what a loaded question.  
“I’ll adjust.”


End file.
